Govt to conduct detailed feasibility study soon

The government is going to conduct a detailed feasibility study for setting up the country's first express highway on the Dhaka-Chittagong corridor.

The Roads and Highway Department (RHD) is set to select an Australia-Japan-Bangladesh joint venture (JV) firm for the job, officials said.

The government, since 2006, has been planning to construct the Dhaka-Chittagong express highway under public-private partnership (PPP) to help the increasing traffic cross the country's main economic corridor speedily.

The officials said negotiation with the SMEC of Australia, Oriental Consultants Co, Ltd of Japan and ACE Consultants Ltd of Bangladesh has already been made in this connection.

They said the agreement with the joint venture firm would be signed after getting approval from the cabinet committee on purchase.

"If the purchase committee gives nod to the negotiation, they will be given the job of carrying out the detailed feasibility study on the tentative five alignments on the corridor to help the government choose the best possible route," said an official preferring not to be named.

He said the process for negotiating with two more consultants for transaction advisory and resettlement work is now underway.

Earlier in 2010, the RHD had invited pre-qualification (PQ) bids from national and international investors to construct the country's second Dhaka-Chittagong highway under PPP depending on a Malaysian firm's feasibility study. It also tagged another proposal to construct an access control highway with the expressway.

But the bid ended with no response from any concessionaire for the US$ 6.0 billion project. The RHD officials cited lack of a detailed study on the alignment and tagging of two projects in a single bid as the reason for it.

Project Director of Dhaka-Chittagong Express Highway project Mahbub ul Alam said based on a conceptual study, no concessionaire was found confident enough to compete for the expensive project.

He said after the cabinet had approved the Dhaka-Chittagong Express Highway, to be constructed formally under PPP in March last year, the RHD started the process for appointing three consultants.

The feasibility study for the expressway will now be conducted on five alignments on the corridor - the first two on the existing Dhaka-Chittagong highway in an elevated way. At that time, the RHD estimated the cost of the proposed expressway at $ 6.1 billion, if built at an elevated level, or at $ 2.2 billion at the ground level.

On completion of the construction work, the expressway will be operated exclusively on the basis of toll collection, the proposal said.

After the government failed to attract the first bid, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has come forward to provide technical support to the project considering its need for transporting nearly 90 per cent of the country's export-import goods through the Dhaka-Chittagong highway.

The study showed it takes around eight to 10 hours, sometimes even more, to cross the 250-kilometre highway and suggested upgradation of the highway to four lanes by 2016, six lanes by 2027 and eight lanes by 2034.